BlackBerry Pearl 8130 Cell Phone Review

[BESadmin]

BlackBerry Pearl 8130 Cell Phone Review
6th January 2008
www.washingtonpost.com

The BlackBerry Pearl 8130 brings Research In Motion's Pearl line to Verizon for the first time. Like the Pearl devices available on other networks, the 8130 is a consumer oriented BlackBerry device with a small form factor and a hybrid SureType keyboard that puts two letters on each key. The Pearl will be attractive to those who want all the power of the BlackBerry platform but don’t want to carry around a bulky device. The Pearl 8130 is also available from Sprint and previous iterations are available from AT&T and T-Mobile. Verizon is offering the Pearl for $199.99 with a two-year contract.

Making a call on the Pearl 8130 was exceedingly easy. Just start typing numbers and then hit the easy to reach send button. Unlike many phones with a QWERTY keyboard, dialing on the Pearl was easier due to the hybrid design of the keyboard, making keys slightly larger on average but still close together. As a BlackBerry device the Pearl 8130 offers an excellent range of organizer features, this device can act as your PDA as well as a phone. And, like all BlckBerry devices, it also integrates easily with an Exchange or BlackBerry server if your company has one.

Audio quality on the Pearl 8130 was very good with both sound sent and received showing no major problems. Side tone, the small amount of your own voice that’s piped back into your ear so you can judge how loud you are speaking, was a little on the low side. This means you may find yourself talking louder than you should, but thi is a minor issue.

As RIM has moved the BlackBerry lineup into the consumer mainstream they’ve made significant improvements to the multimedia features on the device. The Pearl 8130 sports a two megapixel stills camera, which is an upgrade over the original Pearl. The quality of the photos taken by the Pearl was only average, however; the images had a good amount of detail, but the colors were off, with some colors (particularly yellows) coming out pale and understurated. The Pearl 8130 also introduces video recording, a feature not previously seen on BlackBerries, but again the quality was not very good; while the videis it captures are fine for sending at MMS messages, they aren't going to look good on a TV.

The Pearl 8130 also supports music and video playback, although it didn’t excel in either area. The software provided is basic but easy to use but you can’t play copy-protected music and the range of video types supported is limited. If you do decide to use the Pearl 8130 as a multimedia device it can support Micro SD cards up to 4GB in size for a good amount of storage. Users will also appreciate the standard 3.5mm headset jack and support for stereo Bluetooth headphones.

The BlackBerry operating system the Pearl runs tends towards long lists of options, but the pearl-look alike trackball makes it easy to move through these lists. The software is easy to learn, responsive and very stable. Like all BlackBerry devices the Pearl 8130 offers excellent support for email and text messaging. The SureType keyboard was also pretty speedy; we were able to type a healthy 42.4 words per minute on it.

One upgrade found on the Pearl 8130 is an improved web browser. Although still not as good as Safari on the iPhone or Web on Series 60 devices Like the N95 it is a big step up from the older extremely basic BlackBerry web browser. The new browser uses a pointer on screen, which makes getting around a bit easier. It also offers the ability to get an overview of the web page and zoom in on the part you want to see. Bookmarks have also been upgraded, making it easier to access web pages that you view frequently.

The Pearl 8130 performed reasonably well in our battery tests. Talk time was four hours forty-one minutes, which is about average. Music playback time at just over seven hours is sufficient that you’ll be able to use the Pearl to lsiten to music on a commute and make a few calls as well. The Pearl didn’t perform as well as other BlackBerry devices that have put up much better battery scores (such as the Curve, which had a talk time of just over 8 hours), but it’s also a smaller device with a smaller battery.

The BlackBerry Pearl 8130 is a great device for those who want the power of the BlackBerry platform without giving up a small form factor. The Pearl is attractive, easy to use and has several upgrades over previous versions of the Pearl that improves the overall performance. We weren’t particularly impressed by the camera and found the multimedia capabilities only middling, but overall the Pearl 8130 is a good pick for the user who wants a BlackBerry in a small convenient package.

[kellydcarter]

I don't mean to draw traffic away from this forum, but I thought readers might want to check out my blog where I'm continually reviewing my 8130 as I learn all its cool features. I publish solutions to problems that I find, I review cool apps and themes, provide links to other cool 8130-related sites, etc. I truly believe it's a good resource for 8130 owners or prospective owners. My Blackberry Pearl 8130